Embodiments described herein relate generally to routing protocols for a distributed control plane environment in a switch fabric.
In some known monolithic router architectures, a routing protocol such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is implemented as a single process within a single control plane domain that has access to all interior gateway protocols (IGP) and directly connected routes for resolving BGP routes. Such monolithic router architectures, however, typically do not scale well in a data center environment when traffic load increases.
Some known data center network architectures implement a distributed control plane by distributing the core engine (e.g., BGP core engine) among various nodes in a switch fabric. Such a distributed control plane, however, brings challenges to implementing layer-3 routing protocols such as BGP: distributing the core engine and the internal state of routing protocols for a distributed control plane can be challenging because each routing protocol typically has its own unique identifiers and other internal machinery that are designed for a monolithic router architecture.
Thus, a need exists for methods and apparatus that enable implementing a routing protocol for a distributed control plane environment in a switch fabric without modifying the core engine of the routing protocol.